


funeral cockatoo

by leoandsnake



Series: un jour je serai de retour [9]
Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series, jean is a mess, judit POV, precinct 41 dynamics, somewhat a character study of judit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 04:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30066945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandsnake/pseuds/leoandsnake
Summary: What happened when Jean and Judit found out that Harry was shot in Martinaise.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Jean Vicquemare, Judit Minot & Jean Vicquemare
Series: un jour je serai de retour [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095374
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	funeral cockatoo

Judit likes to take the morning shift when she can. If she starts work at 5:00 and gets off at 13:00, then the rest of the day is hers — she can take her kids to the park, or the zoo, or the river, and see her husband for hours before he heads off to his night watchman job.

The mornings are less gory, too. Most of Jamrock’s more gruesome murders occur, or are discovered to have occurred, between the hours of 23:00 and 3:00. The morning shift involves a lot of patrolling and community policing, which she enjoys. Often Judit spends half of her time making small talk with working stiffs, guys working construction on the corner and cashiers at convenience stores, while the day dawns rosily in the sky overhead. These guys usually don’t respect her as much as they would respect her male counterparts, but they respect the gun on her hip, which is enough for her.

On the day of the tribunal, Judit did not take the morning shift. She hasn’t taken the morning shift all week, because Jean is losing his mind and falling apart, and she keeps accompanying him to Martinaise because she suspects that she’s the only person in his life with a well-formed instinct for empathy. Plus, he _is_ her quasi-boss — it’s complicated, but she is, technically, his indirect report in addition to being his temporary partner, even though he’s two years years younger than she is and they hang out all the time.

They got back to the station from Martinaise around sunset, at which point Jean buried himself in paperwork. Judit asked repeatedly if he wanted her help with this, and he repeatedly rebuffed her, so she went upstairs to brief Pryce on Harry’s latest babblings about the case, because that’s what they’ve been working with in lieu of him filing actual reports from the field.

When she walks into Pryce’s office, though, he’s hanging up his phone, and cuts her greeting off with, “They shot the bastard!”

“Which bastard, sir?” Judit says.

“Who do you think?” Pryce lights a cigar and smokes it. “Your erstwhile boss. DB.”

Judit reels in the doorway. “ _Fatally?_ ”

“Not quite. He’s still with us, for now.”

That’s a relief. “Who’s they — the Union?”

“No, no… I just got a call from the 57th, their Kitsuragi radioed in and said they got ambushed by these Wild Pines mercs outside the hostel about a half-hour ago. The two of them interrupted a ‘tribunal,’ he said. They took out all three of the mercs out, though.” Pryce’s head has disappeared in a cloud of cigar smoke. “And Harry took a bullet in the leg. Kitsuragi’s gone to ground with him and has him stabilized, apparently. Three or four Union guys are dead. That’s all we know so far.”

“God, and we _just_ left,” Judit says. With sinking horror, she remembers that she was the one to suggest they head home for the day. “How did this happen?”

The smoke clears enough for her to see the tip of his nose. “Fast.”

“I’ll tell Jean,” Judit says.

“Yeah, please do,” Pryce says. “Because _I_ sure as hell don’t want to.”

Judit nods. She doesn’t want to be the one to tell him, either, but she knows it should be her. The very thought of doing so gives her a sick feeling in her chest. Everyone knows how close Harry and Jean are, even right now, even in spite of everything. She comforts herself with the fact that she doesn’t have to tell Jean that Harry is dead. A leg wound is recoverable, especially if his condition is already stable.

Unfortunately, as Judit is walking down the stairs into the bullpen, she sees Mack and Chester scurrying away from Jules’ central hub over to Jean’s desk with shocked looks on their faces. Judit breaks into a sprint to intercept them, but before she can, Mack says loudly, “Vic! You hear? DB took a bullet in Martinaise.”

Judit darts up behind the two and bumps Mack out of the way like they’re playing rugby, skidding into Jean’s desk and putting her hands down on it to stop herself. Jean has a large-eyed look on his face, like he’s a stray dog that’s in the process of being beaten with a chain.

“ _What?_ ” he says to Judit, looking only at her, completely ignoring Mack and Chester as they leer in morbid curiosity behind her.

“It’s okay,” Judit assures him. “He’s alive and he’s stable. He was shot in the leg.”

Jean lights a cigarette without even seeming to realize what he's doing. “When?”

Judit winces. “Just now. About thirty minutes ago.”

“Didn’t you guys _just_ get back from Martinaise?” Chester exclaims.

Judit turns to the two of them, shooing them away with both hands. “Officers, go back to your desks, please.”

Mack and Chester give each other a look, but comply. “My condolences to the widow Vicquemare,” Chester calls over his shoulder.

Judit turns back to Jean and pulls up a chair beside his desk, leaning her elbow on it. He runs one hand through his hair and keeps it there, cradling his own head, while the other holds his cigarette to his mouth like it’s an oxygen mask.

“Jean,” she whispers, “we had no way of knowing this would happen.”

Jean blinks, then appears to come back online with a jolt. “Fuck you, McLaine,” he yells across the bullpen, before meeting Judit’s gaze. “What happened? Who shot him?”

“The Wild Pines mercenaries had a tribunal, according to Pryce. They shot several Union men, and Harry. Harry and Kitsuragi finished off the three mercenaries, then I guess they retreated back into the Whirling.”

“Anyone dead?”

“Yes, three or four of the Union members.”

Jean brings his hand to his eyes. “Jude,” he says.

“I know.”

“This happened _immediately_ after we left?”

“Listen,” she says, with a hint of uncharacteristic urgency, “it’s possible that the mercenaries intentionally waited for us to go before they struck.”

Jean peeks over his hand at her.

“Doesn’t it make sense?” Judit says. “Why would they want to face off against four officers instead of two? And we can’t stay there twenty-four hours a day, Jean.”

“We’re supposed to be there,” he says in an anguished whisper. “We were always supposed to be there with him.”

“But he told us to go! What were we supposed to do?” Judit hesitates, stopping short of blaming Harry for the bullet in his leg. It wouldn’t help, and anyway, the Harry they knew seems to have vanished, either temporarily or forever. She doesn’t want to be needlessly cruel to the poor brain-damaged husk of a man that she’s been spying on for the last several days.

“I’m his _partner_ ,” Jean says, turning his hand inward and thumping his fingers against his solar plexus.

Judit is quiet. She knows what he means by partner. He doesn’t mean it in the police officer way.

“Are you okay?” she says.

Jean smokes and nods, even though he clearly isn’t. Tears are making his eyes shine, and he keeps looking helplessly around the precinct like a lost child.

“Do you want to go to Martinaise?” she says.

Jean shakes his head. “Not if they’ve taken to shooting cops in the street,” he says. “And anyway, what can we do? He doesn’t want us there, nor recognize us.” He scoffs bitterly. “I’m sure Kitsuragi has it under control.”

“It sounded like he does, yes,” Judit says.

“Good, at least there’s one capable person working that case,” Jean says. His shoulders are rising, and his mouth is flattening; the armor is going back up. “Fuck. Fucking shit. This is all so horrible and stupid, it’s like a Dick Mullen book.”

Judit nods in agreement. Jean puts his cigarette out in the ashtray on his desk, then swipes at the corner of his left eye.

“Do you want to come home with me?” Judit says. “You can have dinner with us.”

“You don’t have to have me over for dinner,” he murmurs.

“We’d like to. Hugo had today off, he’s making spaghetti.”

Jean’s larynx twitches in his throat like he’s swallowing back more tears.

“I insist,” Judit says, because she’s actually worried about Jean being alone right now.

“Okay,” he says. "Thank you."

/

Jean smokes in silence for the entire drive over. His initial horror seems to have subsided, and now he just looks pale and sick. Judit does, in part, share his feelings. Obviously she doesn’t care for Harry the way he does, but any cop worth anything would be sickened to hear that they left a scene just minutes before the shooting started, that they abandoned a post and now the streets are running red with civilian blood.

Inside her shotgun house, her two kids are delighted to see Jean, who usually plays with them when he comes over. Today, though, he heads for the living room couch and lies down like he’s lost the will to stand up. 

The kids seem undeterred by this; they go over to him and start putting stickers on his face and jacket. Jean lets them.

“You okay?” Judit says to him.

Jean nods without opening his eyes. Judit’s son applies a banana sticker to the RCM insignia on his arm.

“Okay,” Judit says, and heads down the hall into the kitchen.

She finds Hugo there, stirring a pot of pasta sauce on the stove. The counter is cluttered with things that need to be put away; she tries not to notice this as she comes up beside him and leans into his shoulder.

Hugo kisses her on the head. “So, bad day?” he says. She had called him from the station to let him know that Jean would be joining them, but didn’t give much detail.

“It wasn’t, until it was almost over,” Judit says. “Harry got shot, we got the call right before we left.”

“Ahh,” Hugo says, like things are clicking into place. He’s the only person she had told about encountering Harry and Jean _in flagrante delicto_. “Not fatally, I’m guessing?”

“No, in the leg,” she says, then falls quiet. She’s not going to offer any additional information about the situation — he doesn’t need to know how close she herself came to getting shot at.

“Well, good.” Hugo offers her the wooden spoon to taste the sauce with.

Judit tries it and nods. “I think it’s done,” she says, and he turns the burner off. “You know, I’m very glad you’re not also a cop.”

“As am I,” Hugo says.

Judit laughs and squeezes his arm. “He’s having a hard time, Jean,” she says, lowering her voice even more than it was before. In the living room, the kids are giggling, which she hopes would drown out any carrying conversation.

“I can imagine,” Hugo says. He turns to the sink to start filling a different pot with water, then whispers over his shoulder (with a tone of profound confusion): “So, is he in _love_ with this guy?”

Judit hesitates. “For his sake, I hope not,” she says.


End file.
